


The Reason She Stayed

by turnonmyheels



Category: Longmire (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mentors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnonmyheels/pseuds/turnonmyheels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vic and Walt's first meeting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reason She Stayed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Odyle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/gifts).



Vic hadn’t wanted to move to Wyoming. She had fought it kicking and screaming every step of the way. The promise of a new, better life, with more money, and eventually a big house with enough land to raise a family on only made her dig in her heels harder. Vic had all the damn family she wanted, thank you very much.

Vic came from a family full of cops — male cops: father, grandfather, brothers, uncles, cousins – every last one of them had tried to sway her from the ‘family’ business on multiple occasions. She was in the top five percent of her Academy class, had a Bachelor’s in law enforcement and a good chunk of her Masters completed along with a specialty in ballistics. Then she spent four years walking the beat on every shit shift and division the Philly PD offered until she made it all the way to homicide detective. All of that and still the only thing people saw when they looked at her was nepotism. 

Still, the thought of sacrificing all that time devoted to climbing the ladder to move to some Podunk backwards place, most likely populated with rednecks who didn’t believe women-folk should be law enforcement made her think about divorcing her husband more than once. He’d made her promise to at least see Wyoming before she left him, so she’d flown out.

She’d traveled half-way across the country on the company’s small Leer jet in the middle of a storm. The jet rocked and rolled with enough turbulence that Vic had thrown up for the last hour of the flight. Glen, her husband, liked to tell the story as a punch-line, the only reason Vic had stayed was because she didn’t want to fly back home. Vic liked to let Glen believe what he wanted to; the real reason she stayed was Walt.

No one met her at the Rapid City airport. She rented an SUV and drove two long ass-numbing hours to Absaroka county and crashed face first into the “hotel” bed – her husband nowhere to be found. Not unusual, he was normally traveling for work and she knew up-front it would be no different all the way out here in bumfuck. Why he even wanted her to uproot her life and move to this hell hole when she wouldn’t see him anymore than she already did was just another mark on a long, ever-growing list of reasons not to be married anymore.

She made her way to a local diner for coffee and then wandered around the one street town until she found the Sheriff’s office. It wasn’t much to look at. There was no hustle, no bustle. Only one person locked up and from the smell she assumed it was a D&D. An older woman named Ruby smiled at her and asked her to have a seat and wait for Walt to come in. Vic waited. And waited. She checked her watch and realized she was still on East Coast time. 

Eventually a man walked in. Vic eyed him top to bottom. Big brown cowboy hat, faded denim button-up shirt, equally faded blue jeans, six-shooter on his hip, and honest-to-god brogans on his feet. Fuck this cowboy shit was the first thing she thought. 

“Sheriff Walt Longmire, nice to meet you ma’am.” He held out his hand and she took it, unsurprised at the calluses that scratched her hands. 

“Detective Moretti, Philadelphia PD. Nice to meet you.”

“Detective, huh?” Walt strode away and Vic followed. His boots clunked heavily on the old wood floor. “What division?”

“Homicide, sir.”

“Walt’s fine, Victoria.” Walt ushered her to into his office and shut the door behind them.

“Walt. You can call me Vic.”

“Vic.” He nodded at her. “Your husband is moving out here with the gas company and you wanted to check us out and see if there was a place here for you.”

It wasn’t a question but she wasn’t surprised; she knew enough about small town gossip for it to not surprise her. “That’s right.” Didn’t mean she had to like it. “A little creepy too.”

“Small town.” He didn’t smile at her when he said it. His face was worn and tired looking, a sadness around his mouth and eyes that she didn’t understand. “Not a lot goes on here, the population is pretty small. But we do get some interesting cases from time to time.”

“Walt! We’ve got reports of gunshots being fired at the Red Pony.” Ruby hollered from the other room.

Walt climbed to his feet and snagged his keys off the desk. “Would you like to ride along?”

Vic blinked in surprise. She’d expected to be told there weren’t any positions available with some veiled gender discrimination. An invite to ride along to a real crime in action hadn’t even occurred to her. “Yes, sir.”

The ride was short. Vic hardly had time to appreciate the view (although the drive the day before had acclimated her to nothing but brown, browner, and brownest below the biggest, bluest sky she’d ever seen) before they were pulling up to a modest bar. There were a couple deputies already on the scene, lights flashing, hiding behind their open car doors. 

“Sheriff.” A handsome man about Vic’s age dressed in deputy tans greeted them. He stood up as they walked over and tipped his hat toward Vic. “Ma’am”

“Branch.”

“Henry Standing Bear called in a disturbance. When we arrived there were shots being fired inside.”

Walt grunted. He took the bullhorn out of the deputy -- Branch’s -- hand and clicked it on.

“Henry!” It squalled with feedback for a second making Vic cover her ears with her hands. “Henry, it’s Walt. I’m coming in.”

“Damn it, Walt.” Branch reached out and tried to stop him but Walt was gone. 

Every minute of school and life on the job had taught Vic better than to follow someone into a situation like this without a weapon and without a vest. But there was something about Walt, something so dry and down-to-earth and competent that Vic followed despite all common sense.

The bar was pretty typical if a bit Western for her taste, if she moved there she’d have to get used to antlers and maybe develop a passion for taxidermy. There were only a couple of people inside on a weekday morning; Vic assumed they worked there. One man waving a gun and yelling at a man she reasoned was Henry and a woman. The man was screaming about her screwing around on him, presumably with Henry. A nail of fear spiked through Vic — domestic disputes weren’t something to be trifled with especially unarmed — but Walt was stoic and calm so somehow Vic was too.

“Now look here, Lou.” The man swung around and pointed the gun at Walt. “I don’t know what’s going on but shooting at Henry and Katie ain’t the answer.”

“She’s cheating on me with that Indian bastard.” Vic winced. She thought it was Native American, not Indian, these days. Katie started yelling back at him and Vic didn’t have time to think about political correctness. 

Lou swung the rifle back around and pointed it right at Katie’s heart, finger wrapped around the trigger. “She didn’t come home last night and I drove around and found her car here, with his. You can’t tell me there’s nothing going on.”

“That’s no reason to come in here guns blazing. Henry can you give me an impartial version of events?”

“I hired Katie a couple weeks ago for the day shift. Everyone called out sick last night and I needed help. She worked until closing, left, and came back early this morning to help set up for today.”

“Katie, where did you go after you left here?”

“I went home. That bastard was passed out drunk on the couch.He wouldn’t have known it if a circus paraded through the house.”

They started yelling at each other again then Lou fired the rifle at the ceiling. Henry pulled Katie down to the ground and, somehow, Walt disarmed Lou and cuffed him quicker than Vic could follow even though she was watching the entire time. Walt walked Lou out to the waiting deputy and handed him over. The radio in his truck crackled and he answered it while Branch was driving off.

“Walt, Officer Matthias called in a body on our side of the res.”

“Ten-four Ruby. I’m heading that way now.” He looked at Vic and raised an eyebrow at her. “Coming?” She was buckling her seatbelt before he had the engine started. 

Vic was in town for three days, during which Walt let her shadow him on the job. Together – though it was mostly Walt because Vic had no idea about this country shit like tracking and spoor and goddamn bow and arrow wounds; but she was willing to learn. She’d never met anyone she could learn as much on the job from as Walt – they’d solved the case and Vic had a job as a deputy if she wanted it. 

Vic wanted it.

Her husband showed up in time to drive her to the airport almost like an afterthought. She didn’t have anything in Philly except the job and family who wished she wasn’t on the job and she wouldn’t have anything in Wyoming but the job either. But she’d have a mentor who didn’t think she was incapable because she had tits or who spent as much time leering at her as he did talking to her. So she agreed to move. 

Six months later finds her eating a chicken-fried steak sandwich, no mayo, on Walt’s tailgate while he sucked mayo off his thumb from his own sandwich and doing her best to understand what the big deal is about Cady and Branch because she just can’t see it. She certainly can’t see enough to explain why she found the two of them pounding the shit out of each other in the middle of the road. Walt’s not a sexist pig but there’s something there. She thinks it’s the same thing that makes him look sad and lost. It’s the same thing that put a chip on his shoulder the size of the Cheyenne Reservation. 

Vic has no idea what it is, but she’s a detective and she’ll figure it out. Even if it involves cowboy art, Indians, Mennonites, and a drug cartel.


End file.
